The Quickening eBook

To such an atmosphere of potential social ostracism
Tom returned after the final scholastic triumph in
Boston; and for the first few days he escaped asphyxiation
chiefly because the affairs of Gordon and Gordon and
the Chiawassee Consolidated gave him no time to test
its quality.

But after the first week he began to breathe it unmistakably.
One evening he called on the Farnsworths; the ladies
were not at home to him. The next night he saddled
Saladin and rode over to Fairmont; the Misses Harrison
were also unable to see him, and the butler conveyed
a deftly-worded intimation pointing to future invisibilities
on the part of his mistresses. The evening being
still young, Tom tried Rockwood and the Dell, suspicion
settling into conviction when the trim maidservant
at the Stanley villa went near to shutting the door
in his face. At the Dell he fared a little better.
The Young-Dicksons were going out for an after-dinner
call on one of the neighbors, and Tom met them at
the gate as he was dismounting. There were regrets
apparently hearty; but in recasting the incident later,
Tom remembered that it was the husband who did the
talking, and that Mrs. Young-Dickson stood in the
shadow of the gate tree, frigidly silent and with her
face averted.

“Once more, old boy, and then we’ll quit,”
he said to Saladin at the remounting, and the final
rein-drawing was at the stone-pillared gates of Rook
Hill. Again the ladies were not at home, but Mr.
Vancourt Henniker came out and smoked a cigar with
his customer on the piazza. The talk was pointedly
of business, and the banker was urbanely gracious—­and
mildly inquisitive. Would there be a consolidation
of the allied iron industries of Gordonia when the
Farleys should return? Mr. Henniker thought it
would be undeniably profitable to all concerned, and
offered his services as financiering promoter and intermediary.
Would Mr. Gordon come and talk it over with him—­at
the bank?

Tom found his father smoking a bedtime pipe on the
picturesque veranda at Woodlawn when he reached home.
Whistling for William Henry Harrison to come and take
his horse, he drew up one of the porch chairs and
filled and lighted his own pipe. For a time there
was such silence as stands for communion between men
of one blood, and it was the father who first broke
it.

“Been out callin’, son?” he asked,
marking the Tuxedo and the white expanse of shirt
front.

“No, I reckon not,” was the reply, punctuated
by a short laugh. “The Avenue seems to
be depopulated.”

“So? I hadn’t heard of anybody goin’
away,” said Caleb the literal.

“Nor I,” said Tom curtly; and the conversation
paused until the iron-master had deliberately refilled
and lighted his corn-cob.

“It’s a-plenty onprofitable, Buddy, don’t
you reckon?” he ventured, referring to the social
diversion.

There was a picric quality in Tom’s tone when
he replied: “The calling act?—­I
have certainly found it so to-night.” Then,
more humanely: “But as a means of relaxation
it beats sitting here in the dark and stewing over
to-morrow’s furnace run—­which is what
you’ve been doing.”